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Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq

The U.S. military occupation of Iraq has now lasted longer than
U.S. involvement in World War II. Yet there is no end in sight to
the mission.

Staying in Iraq is a fatally flawed policy that has already cost
more than 3,000 American lives and consumed more than $350 billion.
The security situation in that country grows increasingly chaotic
and bloody as evidence mounts that Iraq has descended into a
sectarian civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. Approximately 120
Iraqis per day are perishing in political violence. That bloodshed
is occurring in a country of barely 26 million people. A comparable
rate of carnage in the United States would produce more than 1,400
fatalities per day.

That reality is a far cry from the optimistic pronouncements the
administration and its supporters made when the war began. We were
supposed to be able to draw down the number of our troops to no
more than 60,000 before the end of 2003, and Iraqi oil revenues
were to pay for the reconstruction of the country.

Even worse, Iraq has become both a training ground and a
recruiting poster for Islamic extremists. U.S. occupation of Iraq
has become yet another grievance throughout the Muslim world and
has exacerbated our already worrisome problem with radical Islamic
terrorism.

It is time to admit that the Iraq mission has failed and cut our
losses. The notion that Iraq would become a stable, united, secular
democracy and be the model for a new Middle East was always an
illusion. We should not ask more Americans to die for that
illusion.

Withdrawal will not be without cost. Radical Islamic factions
will portray a withdrawal as a victory over the American
superpower. We can minimize that damage by refocusing our efforts
on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere, but there is no way to
eliminate the damage. Even superpowers have to pay a price for
wrongheaded ventures.

Whatever price we will pay for withdrawing from Iraq, however,
must be measured against the probable cost in blood and treasure if
we stay. That cost is already excessive. We are losing soldiers at
the rate of more than 800 per year, and the financial meter is
running at some $8 billion per month. With President Bush’s
announcement of a “surge” of 21,500 additional troops, the pace of
both will increase.

Worst of all, there is no reasonable prospect of success even if
we pay the additional cost in blood and treasure. We need an exit
strategy that is measured in months, not years.

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Policy Analysis

Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign
policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of seven books
on international affairs and a coauthor of Exiting Iraq: Why
the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War against
Al Qaeda (2004).